Just kidding, that's garbage. Garbage, Joyce! Art is a refuge, sure, and great work has been produced in opposition to authoritarian regimes, but those same governments also censor, imprison, and, like... kill the artists they don't like. Remember? From all those years you've been alive? No?

Yeah, I'm sure the fragile-egoed, litigation-happy guy with no regard for the 1st Amendment will be super good for artists. 😒 https://t.co/8XCtP5L5kl

Philip Roth could never have written about a neurotic young Alex Portnoy masturbating into a piece of liver without Nixon in the White House. And it's actually good that hundreds of civilians died in the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War so that Picasso could do a big painting about it. If there's anything artists have trouble conjuring without the help of institutional repression, it's "turbulence & estrangement."

Just imagine: atop the pile of ash and bone, which is all that remains of civilization, a Great American Novel about life under President Trump. The ultimate vindication for art—if only someone were still alive to read it.